Nutritional factors affecting the urinary excretion of acid-soluble peptides(ASP) in rats were studied using protein-free diet, gluten diet, casein diet, and gluten supplemented with lysine and threonine(GLT) diet. The content of urinary ASP was lowest in protein-free diet group among the four kinds of diets above. But the amino acid pattern of urinary ASP in the four dietary groups were similar each other, suggesting that urinary ASP is mainly from endogenous origin under these nutritional conditions. The efficiency of dietary protein utilization was significantly lower in gluten diet than that of casein diet or GLT diet. Those findings suggest that the rate of urinary excretion of ASP-form amino acids can be employed as an index of protein metabolism, particularly as a simple index in the assessing the status of protein nutrition.